


The Origins of Minerva McGonagall

by bonniobonnott



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28594530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonniobonnott/pseuds/bonniobonnott
Summary: While the tales of the heroes of the Wizarding Wars have been shared time and time again, and many people know Minerva Mcgonagall, Order of Merlin First Class, but do they know who she was before she was the head of Gryffindor, caring for the students of the wizarding world? Here is your chance to peak into the life of Minerva McGonagall, and what made him into the woman we have all respected since 1997.
Relationships: Minerva McGonagall/Dougal McGregor
Kudos: 1





	1. Minerva

**Author's Note:**

> After years of writing biographies for both major and minor characters in the Harry Potter Universe, I have written one for one of the most infamous women in the wizarding world: Minerva McGonagall
> 
> A quick note before you proceed; this biography is written in the second person as I feel it is one of the best ways to give an overall view of the characters in question.
> 
> Now, please enjoy!

Whenever your mother, Isobel ross, had met your father, Robert McGonagall, in the small village they both resided in the summer between her fifth and sixth year, no one thought much of it, but for the pair it was love at first sight. Your mother’s family disapproved of her choice because he was a muggle, a young man studying to become a minister like his father before him, and your father’s family disapproved of your mother because they weren’t of the same faith. disapproval didn’t stop them, or you would never have existed at all, and your parents married the summer after her seventh year, much to your grandparent's chagrin. The story looked to be a happy one from the outside, two young people in such love that they married and planned a life together, but the situation was much more complex on the inside. Your mother, a bright witch, had to hide away her wand, and hold her tongue. Little white lies and half truths pepper their conversations as she tries to forget the world she left behind for the man she loves so dearly. She’s sure one day she’ll all but forget the thrill of riding on a broomstick and having a quill take notes for her while she worked on concocting a potion. She tries so hard to be the perfect housewife that your father imagines her to be, and your father is none the wiser, he loves his life with her, and they are completely happy, at least, at first.

That happiness only continues whenever you come screaming into the world on the fourth of October. It’s a joyous occasion in the small home the minister and his wife share, and for your mother, she can think of no better name for you than the name of your great grandmother, a strong and powerful witch. your father thinks the name is strange, and given the opportunity, he would have chosen a more modest name, but he doesn’t protest, too excited at becoming a father. Within hours of your birth though, you show that you are worthy of your namesake as you show signs of magic, much to your mother’s horror. You had no control, how could you, you were only an infant, but your mother did her best to cover up the small instances. As you grew, the signs only grew bigger, from summoning your toys to you to making the family tabby come along with you willing or not, and your mother resorted to isolating the pair of you, terrified what would happen when the time came when she couldn’t hide it any longer. you don’t know what finally forces your mother to break down and tell your father the truth, whether it was the time you played his bagpipes from across the room with a laugh loud enough to wake the dead or simply her own guilt weighing ever so heavily on her heart, but when it happens something changes in the house.

Your mother and father are quieter, and the trust between them is broken. The kisses they used to share nearly disappear entirely, and now they are simply reserved to kisses on the cheek, and never more than once a day. The laughter that used to fill the house is silenced, and your mother seems to age more and more with every coming year. You are eventually joined by two younger brothers, Malcolm and Robert junior, both of whom bring a little light to the McGonagall house again, but things are never the same. It hurts to see it happen, but you remain silent, and follow along. The warmest evenings are Sundays, after church with your father and you come home and have a proper supper dressed in your best clothes. You bow your head in prayer, and you pray every time for the happiness to come back, but your prayers fall on deaf ears every time. The coldest evenings are after any display of magic is made, either by yourself or by your brother. Your mother constantly spends her time cleaning up the messes and mistakes, trying to do so before your father comes home for fear your father will finally leave if she doesn’t. you know better though, you know your father loves your mother, even while he struggles with the existence of magic while being a man of faith. you live in a house divided, but the love is still there, even if it was strained.


	2. Goddess of Wisdom

The day of your eleventh birthday comes about as uneventfully as ever. It’s a cool friday morning, and you start with prayer over the breakfast your mother made you, but you notice your mother seems nervous. You almost ask her why, but you hesitate. Perhaps it’s selfish of you, but you want to savor the morning, and not be bothered by stressing over your mother when it could have been something as simple as burning something on the stove or forgetting an ingredient that none of them had missed. You start your chores, taking care of them before your father comes down from his office to wish you a happy birthday, and you get a warm feeling in your chest as your mother too finally acknowledges the significance of the day. You spend the rest of the day excited for your cake in the evening that you knew your mother was hard at work making, but when dinner comes, so does something else: a letter addressed to you. It had been delivered that morning, by owl if your brother was to be believed, just before breakfast. It’s after dinner and before cake that you are given the letter to open, and you do so carefully, filled to the brim with excitement as you open it. You read it out loud, and the instant you start your mother starts to cry. At first, you assume they are tears of happiness and excitement for you, but it is only later that you realize they are tears of red hot envy. While you are going away to the world of magic and wonder, she is still in a small house in Scotland with her wand hidden away all in the name of love. Your mother still loves your father, she always will, but she’s utterly gutted and retires for the evening before the cake is even finished being cut. Your father apologizes for her, assuring you she is just as proud as he is, but you can tell there’s something else there. You don’t let it dull your excitement, and you swallow the cake, imagining what your time at Hogwarts will hold for you.

Your excitement is warranted, as you’ve never seen anything as beautiful as the great hall when you arrive on your first night. you watch as person after person ahead of you in line is sorted with little fanfare, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin all gain new members. Then, when it’s your turn, it sits there, and it stalls. you hear it muttering to itself as you argue over where to place you, Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. You’ll find out later you were a hatstall, and it took the hat five and half minutes to finally place you with a loud “GRYFFINDOR” that shook the room full of whispers. you find your way to your new housemates you great you with a warm welcome, and that was also the night you met a man who would become your greatest mentor, and your dear friend down the line, Albus Dumbledore.

In Hogwarts you learn everything about the world your mother grew up in, and you fall utterly in love with it all. From the classes where you excel to the sports ( quidditch, a game you come to adore and a game you find yourself taking part in your fifth, sixth, and seventh year playing as a chaser for Gryffindor ), you are utterly obsessed well before you go home for your first break that year. You go home and tell your brothers all above the wonders and about everything you learned, and they sit and listen enamored. Sometimes your mother joins in listening, but you can always see the pain in her face when you do, so you try to keep it as a minimum when you all are together. You never talk to your father about it, nor do you tell him about how your mealtime prayers had become practically nonexistent at the school, but you spend time with him in your own way, hours spent together in his study as he prepared sermons and you studied. It’s quiet moments like this that suit you both best, and ignoring the areas you would disagree. This pattern continues as the years pass, and at school, you grow closer to Albus Dumbledore. Under his instruction, you find your love of transfiguration, and with his help you eventually become an animagus, looking all to similar to the cat you had a child with one notable exception: a strange pattern resembling spectacles around the eyes. Your seventh year, you are riding on a high you hope to never come down from as you have secured top grades on O.W.L.s, the title of prefect, the title of head girl, and won the transfiguration today most promising newcomer award, and Gryffindor is competing against Slytherin to secure the Quidditch Cup. It’s during your final game on the quidditch pitch that something tragic happens, whether an accident or intentional, you are taken off your broom and sent hurtling at the ground with a substantial force. You end up with a concussion, spend two days unconscious in the hospital wing to wake up with broken ribs and a desire to never see Slytherin win a quidditch match again. but, other than this bleak moment, your Hogwarts experience is something you would have never imagined, and you nearly cry when the time comes for it to end.


	3. Virgin Goddess

Graduating from Hogwarts was your proudest achievement to date, though that is quickly surpassed by the position you earn in the department of magical law enforcement beginning in the fall. Enough time for your ribs to fully recover from the tragic fall your senior year, and enough time for you to say goodbye to your family before relocating to London for your position. You expect your summer to be rather dull, and you would have much rather spent it at work, but you don’t protest and you return home. Your mother greats you with a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug, while your father squeezes your shoulder and reminds you how proud they both are of you. You thank them, and you prepare for a dreadful summer spent packing, chores, and church sermons. The summer was supposed to be boring, and when fall came, you wish it had been as boring as you’d imagined it being.

You are spending your summer at home with your parents and your brothers when you first meet Dougal McGregor. you know the name, his father owns a farm on the outskirts of the village, and his father had owned it before that, you don’t know him yet, but he makes it his mission that you will. You were on your way to the market, a distance from the house, but nothing you couldn’t manage well enough on your own, and he was tending to his fields. When you passed by though, he dropped what he was doing, and came to join you. At first you were annoyed, sure it was simply another boy trying to be chivalrous, another boy trying to treat you like a piece of fragile china, but he doesn’t. No, he jokes, and teases, and the two of you bicker back and forth the entire trip. By the time you approach the McGregor farm again, you’re sure he’s learned enough to know to stay away, but he doesn’t stop at the farm, and instead walks with you all the way up the lane to your doorstep, offering you a crooked smile and his thanks for the lovely walk. You thank him for his company, and shut the door behind you before your mother can ask who it was, and although you act as if it was just another visit, you find yourself looking out the kitchen window as you put away the spoils of your trip to watch as he walks back toward the farm, and you aren’t sure why you’re still thinking of him hours later as you prepare for bed. You’re sure it was just a phase, a momentary lapse of judgement, and you’re positive it will be gone by morning.

The feeling never leaves, however, and neither do your walks together. Any time you cross the path of the farm, he is by your side, chatting and talking away. as the weeks pass, and the walks continue, the more you learn about the uninvited guests on your trips. You learn that he’s studied at university, and that he has grand plans for his future, and that he has a wicked sense of humor that can make you laugh even when you’re utterly furious with him. You also find yourself looking at the way his hair looks in the early morning sun, and the way his crooked smile fits his face just so. You never mean to fall in love, but you do, little by little, and it becomes all consuming. Now you find yourself seeking him out in the fields, standing by and talking to him as he works so that his father doesn’t badger him about it later. As you fell for him, he fell for you. He spoke to you like an equal, a partner in crime rather than a lesser person the way most do. He teases you, tests you, and drives you up a wall, and as fall approached, you begin to realize you can’t imagine a life without him.

With fall just around the corner, some plants begin to perish, and time comes to prepare some fields for the following spring. You expected to find McGregor in a field, hard at work, but instead you find him in a plowed field, shovel in hand, that wicked grin on his face as it always was, and it makes your heart flutter just a bit. as you approach, teasing him for standing around in the middle of a field, he does something unexpected, and he gets down on one knee and opens a box with an antique ring inside. Dougal had caught you off guard countless times, but this time you were completely unprepared. he began to explain that he didn’t have much yet, that the farm wasn’t yet him, and that the ring wasn’t new or enough for a woman such as her, but it was his family ring, generations old with decades of love and laughter worn into it. It’s as he’s babbling that you start to cry, and before he can even ask you offer him a simple one word answer: Yes. He stands up from the ground and places the ring on your finger, and laughs as he reaches up to hold your face in his hands, wiping away your tears. “You didn’t even let me finish…” He’s laughing, and you’re laughing, and you do something bold: you lean up and kiss him. It’s a chaste kiss, lasting no more than a moment, but for you it is everything.

You spend the day with him, imagining what it will be like when you go home and tell your parents the news. You’re practically vibrating with excitement as you walk down the lane as the sun begins to set. Your father will be happy, McGregor comes from a good presbyterian family, and never misses a service, and your mother will be happy that you are happy. as you admire the ring, you think of your whirlwind romance, and how different the summer had looked than you’d imagined it. You’d imagined spending one last summer around the house, helping your mother and father with your brother’s and upkeeping your childhood home, and then you’d be off to your new and exciting job at the department of magical law enforcement, and it’s when you remember your job that you find yourself at a complete stop in the middle of the lane with a sick feeling in your stomach. Dougal had no idea that you were a witch, had no perception of the wizarding world, or what your job would entail. if you married him, you’d have to give up your job, the career you’d worked so hard for, and put your wand up the same way your mother had. You know you love him, more than you’ve ever loved anyone or anything, and for a moment, you think you can give it up, give everything up to be his wife by his side, but then you remember the hot tears your mother shed on your eleventh birthday when you’d received your Hogwarts letter, the envy and agony in her eyes as she was so frequently reminded of the world she’d loved and had to give up, and you know you couldn’t bare to be in the same position, and you can’t marry him.

You swallow back your tears, your pain and your agony, and you come inside your house and say nothing at all. The excitement that had been in your eyes was gone, and the normal warmth that filled your brown eyes was dulled. You sit through dinner silently, and do your chores before going to bed knowing what you must do in the morning. You cry yourself to sleep for the first time in your life, and it won’t be the last time you cry tears over the marriage that can never be.

The next morning, with a heavy heart you walk down to the McGregor farm, dreading every step. the sun wasn’t up yet, still peaking over the horizon, and yet he was there in the fields, taking advantage of the cool morning air. His eyes light up when he see’s you, and just like he has did the first time he met you that summer, he runs over to great you, crooked smile and all. He notices something is wrong when he’s only a few feet away, and he’s asking what. He asks about your father, your mother, your brother, concern etched into the face you’ve come to love. Finally, struggling to maintain what composure you have, you tell him that you can’t marry him. He looks bewildered at first, as if he didn’t hear you, and then comes the damning question you can’t answer. “Why?”

If you tell him, you’ll lose the job you’ve worked so hard for, and there would be other consequences to pay. The statues of secrecy that had made your mother into a bird in a guilded cage would have done the same to you, and you can’t allow that to happen, but it damns you to have no answer. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.” You peel the ring off your finger, less than twenty-four hours after it had found it’s home there, and hand it back to him, and for the first time, you see the love of your life start to tear up. You can’t bare to watch, your heart aching for it’s other half as you turn away from the broken man you are leaving behind, and head back toward your home down the lane. Your only saving grace is that he doesn’t follow after you, for if he had, you aren’t sure you would have been strong enough to say no once more. over the next three days, you never see Dougal outside in the fields, and you don’t see him in the church pews on sunday as your father gives his sermons. After that, you don’t know what happens to the man you loved, as you leave for London on the third day, heart still aching for the half you leave behind in your village.

Minerva was a virgin goddess, unmarried and powerful all on her own. When you were a child, reading up on the namesake of yourself and your great grandmother, you’d found it endearing, a woman whose ambition was never stunted by the distraction of love, or by the ambition of a husband. It was empowering, and ideal, or so you though. only now that you are living through it for yourself are you faced with the stark reality of the situation: it is utterly lonely.


	4. Goddess of a Thousand Works

After the heartache of leaving your former fiancé, work comes as a welcome distraction when you arrive at the Ministry. Training is tasking, lots of rules and regulation, learning how to deescalate a situation, how to see through an investigation, and everything in between. For some it's too much, and several of those hired with you don't last the first six months, but you push through. Wise and stubborn, you press on, impressing those above you. Usually excelling gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment, but every day of your training, and every day of work after that your opinion of the Ministry of a whole is soured. The statutes of secrecy is important, they remind you every day, so very important, and yet it had taken so much from your mother, so much that the love of a husband and family can't replace, and it has taken so much from you. While you work diligently, your allegiance never lies with the Ministry, a fact that only grows more and more apparent to you as your employment drags on.

It’s after two years that they deem you worthy of a promotion, news your boss tells you so enthusiastically in front of all of your coworkers. Some are jealous, others are congratulatory, and some share harsh whispers about a muggle sympathizer working their way up the ranks. It should have been an exciting day, one filled with so much joy and triumph, but the promotion only serves to remind you of what you hate in ministry. You hate the ingrained bias against muggles, against muggleborn witches and wizards, the stirrings of a war that is over a decade away. Every slur, or comment reminds you of your kind father, and of the boy with a crooked smile you left behind for the job. You hate London, the rainy and bleak weather leaving you feeling like you’ve aged ten years in the two that you’ve lived there, and you long for your home in Scotland. So you do the unthinkable, you turn down the promotion, and you write Dumbledore inquiring about a teaching position. You sit on pins and needles as you wait for a response from your former mentor, and it takes less than a day for the answer to come back, and the following fall you begin your position as a Transfiguration professor.

It’s as a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that you start to find your stride. You enjoy seeing students flourish under your careful hand, enjoy being back in the place that magic so real to you as a small child, to watch the Quidditch matches and feeling the same feeling you used to feel when you took to the pitch during your years on the team. You start to realize it wasn’t just Scotland you missed, no, your home is in Hogwarts, in the energy the castle possesses. Hogwarts and Gryffindor are your home, and they will always be there to welcome you back.


	5. Goddess of War

The war doesn’t begin all at once, it builds up like a powder keg ready to explode, and no one is ready whenever it finally does. While tensions explode outside, you can only watch and read about it as school year after school year comes and passes. You see students start their education and end it in the time the war consumes the wizarding world just outside your doors, and while you used to be filled with so much excitement when your students graduate, now you only fear for the uncertain world you are releasing them into. It is no longer a safe place, filled with magic and possibility, instead it has been marred by the horrors of war, hate, and violence. The day they leave Hogwarts is the last day you can keep them safe, and it hurts more than you can express. You can’t protect them forever, and you hate it.

Death is an inevitability in war, but the news never comes easy. Former students, friends, colleagues, they all find their way into an early grave, but the news that struck you the hardest in the early days of the war came from your mother’s lips. Dougal McGregor, the man you never moved past, was dead, along with his wife and children in an attack against muggles. You attend the funeral, surrounded by faces you don’t know, and you can’t help but feel heartache as you look at the gravestones. His dreams for his future were now gone, vanished in a single wave of a wand, and the dreams he’d had for his family were gone just as quickly. Part of you wonders if things had been different if you’d been there to protect him, if you’d given up your dreams for the tears of envy that had been seared in your memory since your eleventh birthday. You stay there long after the cold started to bother you, you stay there long after the tears on your face leave your face chapped and aching, but when you leave, it’s for the last time, and you never go back.

The war is still raging on outside the castle walls, and you do what you can to prevent the tensions from taking hold inside. From inside the classroom, where you refuse to allow bigotry to stand, to the evenings where you stretch your legs throughout the castle, every move is deliberate and calculating. While your students babble on in the common rooms, blissfully unaware, you find yourself as a tabby cat with square spectacle like markings around your eyes, listening and gathering intel to supply the order. From inside the stone walls, there isn’t much you can do during the school year, but you do what you can. It started in the early days of the war, and with McGregor dead and in the ground, you find more of a reason to trudge on. you keep going for your muggleborn students who deserve a chance to learn and live the same as any other wizard or witch. You keep going for your friends and family who live in fear of the dark lord and his followers, and you keep going because you refuse to let hatred win.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's my take on the origin of Minerva McGonagall leading up to, and partially through, the first wizarding war! I hope you enjoyed


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